So That She Should Never See Me Poem by Robert Rorabeck

I sleep with my clothes on.
I haven’t taken these jeans off,
Or these scars,
Since I saw them swimming through
The red aquarium.
My body is pale and marked,
But no one will know, and yet,
When I must rise again,
My hand will be on the plough before
Her man, and I will bring the metamorphosis
Out of the seeds in the earth,
And my friends will rise from them,
Singing to me, and their eyes
Will not fall to my indecision,
And they will not falter,
And we will ban together and wait
For my sister to return riding down
From the sky from his palace before
My parents wake-up,
And then we will go together through
The hallways of high school,
Singing our song,
Waiting for the forecasted rain to dampen
The red diamond,
And then we will take each of our positions,
And play a game of baseball,
Our jaws knotted in the weather,
And the clouds will scroll multi-headed
In a steady bereavement;
Far above us, they will certainly
Cluster and, dampening, shadow, and
The wind to bluster; and by evening my jeans
Will be marked and dirty,
Known better then to my dogs, I will crawl
In between their drooling snouts,
And sleep there through the night
With my clothes on, so that she should never
See me.